Barney Frank Quotes

A disputant no more cares for the truth than the sportsman for the hare.

They dispute not in order to find or even to seek Truth, but for victory, and to appear the more learned and strenuous upholders of a contrary opinion. Such persons should be avoided by all who have not a good breastplate of patience.

...associational ad hominem attacks remain the left's favorite rhetorical strategy for undermining opponents.

If you can somehow force a liberal into a point-counterpoint argument, his retorts will bear no relation to what you’ve said - unless you were in fact talking about your looks, your age, your weight, your personal obsessions, or whether you are a fascist. In the famous liberal two-step, they leap from one idiotic point to the next, so you can never nail them. It’s like arguing with someone with Attention Deficit Disorder.

Those who, in debate, appeal to their qualifications, argue from memory, not from understanding.

I love the question-and-answer. I love to see liberals try to thrash their way to a coherent argument. And actually, I think it's fun to debate.

So you see how endlessly futile and fruitless it would be if we wanted to refute their objections every time they obstinately resolved not to think through what they say but merely to speak, just so long as they contradict our arguments in any way they can.

It's so much easier to debate people when you can pretend that they hold moronic position that they don't actually believe.

The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence.

For dishonest thinking, however well-intentioned, can only discredit the cause it serves, and must in the long run boomerang disastrously on those who indulge in it.

The skilful disputant well knows that he never has his enemy at more advantage than when, by allowing the premises, he shows him arguing wrong from his own principles.

I've learned that sometimes when people don't like what you have to say, and don't want to debate you on ideas, it's just easier to call you a dumb blonde from Fox News.

The best causes tend to attract to their support the worst arguments, which seems to be equally true in the intellectual and in the moral sense.

Stupid people surround themselves with smart people. Smart people surround themselves with smart people who disagree with them.

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, or attracted much sustained inquiry. In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves.

There's all of this stuff where we have so much debate over nonsense; it could be cured if we had a better educational system, if we trained people to really try and look into things on their own. That's a tough thing to do, particularly with the educational system staggering.

In the United States Senate, one of the things I observed in the early days - and it's still used - and that is that you take someone's argument and then you misrepresent it and misstate and disagree with it. And it's very effective. I've done it myself a number of times. But eventually, eventually people catch on.

Political debate is more interested in manipulating the truth, than finding the truth.

Few things are more irritating than when someone who is wrong is also very effective in making his point.

Most Christians with bitterness have a need to justify their sin. They usually do so with virtuous names for the sin like discernment, wisdom, etc. They attract people with complaints as it confirms their “discernment.

I know no better way of waging the battle for Truth than arraying the facts face to face on either side and letting them fight it out.

Affect not little shifts and subterfuges to avoid the force of an argument.

In a debate, rather pull to pieces the argument of thy antagonists than offer him any of thy own; for thus thou wilt fight him in his own country.

Most people argue over who's right, not about what the truth is.

It is impossible to get anywhere without sinning against reason.